Alex Comfort

Writer / Sex Advisor

Born: 10 February 1920

Died: 26 March 2000

Birthplace: London, England

Best known as:

The uninhibited author of The Joy of Sex

Dr. Alex Comfort was the author of the groundbreaking 1972 how-to manual The Joy of Sex. Alexander Comfort was a trained biologist and psychiatrist, and his early career was devoted to the study of aging and to a fairly standard scholarly approach to sexual behavior. But in 1972 he published The Joy of Sex, which advocated greater sexual freedom in explicit words and pictures. It became one of the first bestsellers on sex and made Comfort a renowned expert on the topic. He then wrote about the psychological and sociological effects of "free love" in the book More Joy (1974) and moved from England to California to continue writing and researching sexual behavior. Aside from his impressive academic career and research on sex, aging and pacifism, Alex Comfort also had a literary career, especially in the 1940s. His novels include No Such Liberty (1941), The Power House (1944) and On This Side Nothing (1949).